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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Further afield in the Lower Mainland, there has been a corresponding increase in metal theft and even less enforcement of scrap metal bylaws.

The Sun polled four Lower Mainland municipalities with these bylaws — Surrey, Maple Ridge, Langley and Port Coquitlam — and only one has cited a dealer for a single infraction.

That was in Surrey, B.C.’s second-largest municipality, where one of the city’s six dealers was cited for not recording details about the seller’s vehicle.

One yard is under investigation for buying stolen metal, but city hall’s senior bylaw enforcement officer, Rick Bamford, said these cases can be difficult to prove.

Joss Brothers Recycling in Surrey sits next door to Ever Recycling, a dealer that twice bought burned Telus wire from an undercover Sun reporter — even though that is prohibited by the bylaw.

Joss co-owner David Joss said he has complained to city bylaw officers 15 to 20 times over the past year about alleged violations at Ever, ranging from piling all its scrap together — rather than separating it into easy-to-inspect metal types — to having stacks of stolen Safeway shopping carts.

Joss has now given up logging complaints.

“Somebody needs to stand behind these bylaws and nobody has done this to date,” said Joss, adding that illegitimate dealers give his industry a bad name.

The Sun tried to interview a manager at Ever, but he refused to give his name and generally denied his shop had done anything wrong.

Ever filed a lawsuit against two Surrey bylaw officers in December, alleging their inspections were racist harassment directed at the company’s Chinese employees.

In a response filed in court in January, the City of Surrey said its bylaw officers acted “reasonably” and any alleged losses suffered by Ever could have been prevented if the scrapyard had complied with unspecified bylaws.

Bamford, Surrey’s bylaw enforcement officer, said Ever’s lawsuit did not compromise the city’s ability to monitor the yard.

“We have an ongoing investigation and this thing could and will be before the courts, so it’s not appropriate for me to comment [further],” he said.

Surrey’s two-year-old bylaw requires dealers to send police daily reports describing the type and weight of the metal they buy, but Joss and one other dealer told The Sun they aren’t doing this because they’ve never been told where to send the documents.

Nor did Bamford know the dealers were not sending the daily reports to police until informed by The Sun.

At Parsons Scrap Metal in Surrey, co-owner John Chan also has not sent any sales reports to police, and said bylaw officers have visited his yard fewer than five times since the bylaw was passed.

The daily reports required by the municipal bylaw contain little information to help police conclude a piece of scrap metal might be stolen, a police source said.

The provincial law asks dealers to include more details, but under-resourced police will still have to find time to read the hundreds of pages sent to them daily.

“That’s the missing link of this metal legislation,” said Craig Merritt of Rypac Aluminum Recycling.

“How can you say by us faxing some innocuous info to the police, are they suddenly going to have the resources to check these leads out? I would think: no.”

Solicitor-General Shirley Bond said officers told her daily reports will be of value, and vowed police and the Crown will use the law “seriously” to crack down on theft.

“There will be people who will still find ways to get around the law. But it is our job to make sure that there is a consistent application and ongoing enforcement,” she said.

At CAC Enterprises in Maple Ridge, co-owner Xiao Yang said he is not sending daily reports to police because he was not aware that was required by the bylaw.

Ridge Meadows RCMP has been working with yards to get them to comply with the local bylaw since it was passed seven months ago, but added the window for this “non-grace period” would soon be closed.

“The next step for us is obviously to make a proposal to city council requesting the [removal] of the business licence,” Fleugel said, declining to name dealers.

The Sun caught CAC violating two portions of the bylaw when a reporter sold it a Telus phone booth and did not use proper identification. Yang said he has since improved staff training and posted signs saying only government-issued ID will be accepted.

At West Coast Recycling in Langley, where a high-tech software system tracks and reports sales to police daily, owner Terry McHale said the bylaws haven’t stopped underhanded dealers and predicted nothing will change with the new provincial law.

“If they change the rules, they [shady dealers] will adapt and change the way they work. That’s how they think.”

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